Giving Voice to Good Ideas

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Here's the presentation I gave at this year's Lean Startup Conference:

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Top 10 Lessons from Steve Jobs' Legacy

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I just finished reading Steve Job's biography by Walter Isaacson which I highly recommend.  I like top 10 lists so I compiled the biggest lessons I took away from his impressive accomplishments: 1.      Put Design First Most companies design around engineering constraints.   At Apple, design was first, like designing the computer case first and having engineering make the components fit.   I thought of the many times I’ve heard designers get pushback on their designs because of “feasibility issues”.   If we’re going to create great products, let’s rise up to the challenge of figuring out how to implement the best designs we can think of with a can-do attitude. 2.      Put Products Before Profits Steve Jobs’ describes his passion as “to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products.   Everything else was secondary.” There are numerous examples where Apple put products befo...
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When Metrics Bite!

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First published on LinkedIn . On Thursday July 26, 2018, Facebook set a dubious record: The value of their shares plunged 19% erasing $119 billion in market value – the biggest single-day loss in market cap ever for any public company. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal loss was $16 billion! Almost at the same time, Amazon posted a quarterly profit of $2.5 billion pushing its stock up over 4% as their market valuation inched tantalizingly close to $1 trillion! Jeff Bezos is by far the richest man in the world with a personal net worth of over $140 billion. In my non-expert opinion, I feel the market may have overreacted to Facebook’s recent issues. That being said, the contrast in Amazon and Facebook’s fortunes did bring to mind how optimizing internal metrics that aren’t about customer value can eventually bite you. Although financial metrics (revenue and profit growth) are the ultimate scorecard for publicly traded companies, investors and employees often look at other met...
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Quincy Jones Leadership Lessons

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  This article was first published on LinkedIn . Quincy Jones was arguably the most influential and successful music producer of our generation. When he passed away in 2024, he left an indelible mark on the music, film, and television industries—one that will likely never be rivaled. His career spanned multiple musical generations and genres, and he collaborated with some of the greatest artists of all time, including Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, and Michael Jackson. Along the way, he amassed an astonishing 28 Grammy Awards, solidifying his place as a true legend. Beyond his musical genius, Quincy Jones was a leader whose legacy offers valuable lessons for anyone seeking to inspire, innovate, and excel. Here are four of the most impactful leadership lessons we can learn from him. ...
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